Backlink, how to delete or find who is linking to me?

[edward-may]

Hi there guys,

Can someone tell me how I go about finding who is linking  to my site or how to find backlinks to my site and if it is a spam site or a site I don't know or want linking to me, how to stop them from linking to me and also how to delete their link?

Thanks appreciate the time

Cheers

[masonrj]

I'm not sure I completely understand your question, but if your trying to identify the source of your inbound links use the Open Site Explorer tool. It will give the source of the incoming link, the page it's linking to, plus the domain and page authority of the linking site.

Removing links is a bit more complicated.  You can use the disavow tool located in Google Webmaster Tools to unclaim these links.  Unless you've been hit with a penalty or have engaged in some questionable back link building schemes, I would not mess with disavowing any links.

Hope that helps, best of luck

[Chris661]

As Richard says you can use OSE right here! Also you can see links in GWMT. Ahrefs and Majestic are also great resources. Tools like Link Detox or Link Risk are also available and claim to help you determine if the link is bad. Although the best resource for that is you. Because you will know if this was a "manipulated" link. These automated tools may have false positives for links that might actually be helping your site. But again, you will be the best judge of that.

You can't really delete a link but can request it be removed through the webmaster or disavow it in GWMT. I think Richard gives great advice however when he points out that if you haven't had a penalty in the past, you may be better off not worrying about using the disavow tool. If you are in the group of us who have been penalized in the past, you might consider proactive disavow with Google.

Best!

[MindlessWizard]

I heard about linkpatrolwp.com as well. May be you can check if that actually works.

[ofw12387]

If you consider the link as toxic, before using disavow tool from Google, I would first try to contact the webmaster, sometimes this help to me

Br

//Oliver

[David-McGawn]

As the other guys have said but also you have the option to disavow the whole domain if you have many "bad" links from the same domain,

I pulled the company i work for out on a G penalty last year and i contacted all the webmasters (even though no response) and just saved a screen shot and that was enough for Google for that link, So i would suggest keeping a screen shot of your contact just in case for future reference that you need it and then disavow it

[NHA_DistanceLearning]

LinkPatrol is meant for controlling outgoing links, not inbound ones. It could still be useful on a WordPress site / blog of considerable size, though.

[edward-may]

Hi Chris661

Thanks for your response, definitely helped.  I'm new to all this and have just launched my custom platform, I have contracted and SEO company but not so sure if they are producing the goods.  I am aware of our competitors who have been penalised from spam back links to which I wanted to do more research around this to make sure we had stuff in place to avoid the same issue.  When I looked at all their back links through OSE after contacting the moz support, it showed as Richard said, all the domains, links that were pointing to the site.  As a newbie trying to understand what the process is around this kind of situation.  It seems anyone can really point to your site so wondering how do we monitor links pointing to our site, and once we have detected the link, is it just a matter of contacting the web master and asking google to disavow?

[edward-may]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the advice. Yes I just got the hand of using OSE   I just didn't understand if this is something I need to watch.  I have just launched our new platform and basically I have an SEO company on board but don't seem to be producing the goods, I find I get alot more from Moz.

I haven't been hit with a penalty, but I know our competitor of ours has, and it seems to be from spammy backlinks as noted by someone at moz.  I'm just curious to know if this should happen to me, I would rather try to avoid the same situation from happening to us.  Any advice around how to go about avoiding this, or how we can eliminate the potential would be much appreciated.

Cheers